Blasts affect call flow to Indian BPOs

Pragati Verma, TNNJul 8, 2005, 12.09AM IST

NEW DELHI: The London blasts spelt a day with no work for many persons employed at Indian call centres, specially those working for British clients. Several call centres in India suspended outbound services like telemarketing, customer service and collections for the day, as a courtesy gesture to free up clogged lines in London and empathise with their British customers .

Interestingly, they did not face a communications breakdown, but most companies received instructions from their clients to suspend outbound calls for a day as they felt it is "not the best time to sell anything or ask for payments ."

HCL, which runs a huge call centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland, suspended all calls at the Ireland call centre, and organised training and other offline work for all its 1,800 employees. Work outsourced from all its five clients, including British Telecom, was completely stopped.

The majority of outbound work offshored to India from Britain, including customer services, teleservices and collections, was also suspended for the day. "We have stopped outbound calls to customers in Britain to empathise with them in their national tragedy," said Ranjit Narsimhan, chief operating officer, HCL BPO.

Interestingly, it was not the clogged networks that stopped them as their private lines were virtually unaffected, even as you and I were struggling to get through to London on public switched networks.

"We didn't see any connectivity problems as we don't go through the public networks, but only via our private leased lines," said Saurabh Srivastava, chairman, Xansa India.

Many managing call centre operations in India for British customers started shutting some services immediately after receiving requests from Britain.

"The explosions in London have not affected eFunds' ability to service its outsourcing clients. We have, however, complied with instructions from some clients to suspend certain services provided on their behalf, in line with their own internal policies," said an E-funds spokesperson.

While expressing empathy for Brit customers, many in the BPO sector also believe that first-hand experience with terrorism will help apprehend security concerns about India. "This will also make Americans and Europeans realise that terrorism is as much a phenomenon in Manhattan and London as in Ayodhya, and the work offshored to India is as safe as anywhere else in the world," said the head of a BPO company.